Environmental crisis is a cliché whose connotations of divine judgment we no longer notice. But the term is apt for what is happening to the earth today. Habitats are disappearing and species going extinct at unprecedented rates. Artificial chemicals in ecosystems worldwide are lowering sperm counts and upsetting the gender balance of newborn vertebrates, including humans. The situation is grave even if we table the contested issue of global warming. Pioneering evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson even set aside his longstanding differences with fundamentalists over human origins to pen The Creation, a plea for conservative Christians to embrace their responsibilities as stewards of God’s earth. Ironically, Wilson is preaching to the choir: a recent study by the Barna Group found that nine in ten American evangelicals would like Christians to care more actively for creation. We are turning green.
With the release of The Green Bible (Harper One, 2008), the Scriptures are turning green too—literally. This “green-letter edition,” says its publisher, “is the definitive Bible for the growing creation care movement.” Its green ink highlights more than 1,000 passages chosen by The Green Bible‘s editorial team to demonstrate God’s involvement in creation, the interdependence of its elements, its response to God, and how we are called to care for it.
The Green Bible‘s packaging almost parodies itself: soy-based inks, recycled paper, and a stylish, earthy cotton/linen cover made through a process in which “all air is purified before exhausting into the atmosphere and all water is purified and recycled.” Surely this was a marketing necessity; the publisher could not afford the charges of hypocrisy that would follow if it printed The Green Bible the way it prints … well, its other books. But The Green Bible is not a self-parody. It’s offered as a serious Bible, with introductory essays by an ecumenical mix of voices such as N. T. Wright, Desmond Tutu, Pope John Paul II, Brian McLaren, and Barbara Brown Taylor, and an epilogue with topical studies and an environmental subject index. All these resources aim to orient readers to Scripture’s concern for the natural world, along with its calls for social justice and poverty relief.
Verdant Verses
The real hook, of course, is the green-lettered biblical text. It mimics the wildly successful red-letter edition of the Bible that Louis Klopsch, the enterprising and philanthropic editor of the Christian Herald, invented just over a century ago. That edition’s red ink symbolized “the new covenant in my blood” of Luke 22:20. How will swapping blood for chlorophyll color our reading?
[Updated 10:45 a.m. Thursday with additional reactions.]
Only two days after announcing it would hire Christians in same-sex marriages, World Vision U.S. has reversed its ground-breaking decision after weathering intense criticism from evangelical leaders.
"The last couple of days have been painful," president Richard Stearns told reporters this evening. "We feel pain and a broken heart for the confusion we caused for many friends who saw this policy change as a strong reversal of World Vision's commitment to biblical authority, which it was not intended to be."
"Rather than creating more unity [among Christians], we created more division, and that was not the intent," said Stearns. "Our board acknowledged that the policy change we made was a mistake … and we believe that [World Vision supporters] helped us to see that with more clarity … and we're asking you to forgive us for that mistake."
"We listened to [our] friends, we listened to their counsel. They tried to point out in loving ways that the conduct policy change was simply not consistent … with the authority of Scripture and how we apply Scripture to our lives," said Stearns. "We did inadequate consultation with our supporters. If I could have a do-over on one thing, I would have done much more consultation with Christian leaders."
"What we are affirming today is there are certain beliefs that are so core to our Trinitarian faith that we must take a strong stand on those beliefs," said Stearns. "We cannot defer to a small minority of churches and denominations that have taken a different position."
"Yes, we will certainly defer on many issues that are not so central to our understanding of the Christian faith," he said. "But on the authority of Scripture in our organization's work [and employee conduct] … and on marriage as an institution ordained by God between a man and a woman—those are age-old and fundamental Christian beliefs. We cannot defer on things that are that central to the faith."
Stearns expects the board to continue to deal with questions about employment and same-sex relationships. "I think every Christian organization will continue to deal with this sensitive issue," he said. "The board will continue to talk about this issue for many board meetings to come. … We need to have a process to do further and wider consultation with key Christian leaders around the country, and we will be discussing how that can happen."
Today's letter explaining the reversal was overwhelmingly approved by the board, Stearns said [corrected]. The letter is posted in full below. [Editor's note: All references to "World Vision" refer to its U.S. branch only, not its international umbrella organization.]
The initial decision faced heavy backlash from the evangelical community—including Al Mohler, Russell Moore, John Piper, and Franklin Graham—with few voicing open support for the decision. The day after the initial policy change was made, the Assemblies of God, one of America's largest and fastest-growing denominations, urged its members to consider dropping their financial support from World Vision and instead "gradually shifting" it to "Pentecostal and evangelical charities that maintain biblical standards of sexual morality."
"The U.S. branch of World Vision has placed Pentecostal and evangelical churches in a difficult position," said George O. Wood, general superintendent of the 3-million-member AG, before the reversal. "On the one hand, we applaud the work they do among the poor in America and around the world, and many churches have supported that work financially for some time. On the other hand, World Vision's policy change now puts them at odds with our beliefs regarding sexual morality."
On Wednesday night, Wood encouraged "Pentecostals and evangelicals who hastily canceled their sponsorship of children in World Vision programs to immediately reinstate that support in order to ensure continuity of care for the poor children whom Christ loves."
Stearns acknowledged Wednesday [March 26] that "a number" of child sponsors canceled their sponsorship in the past 48 hours in protest of the change to World Vision's conduct policy.
"That grieves us, because the children we serve will suffer because of that," he told reporters. "But our choice is not about money or income. It's a sincere desire for us to do the right thing. To be consistent with our core values, and to respond to the legitimate feedback and counsel we have received from supporters and friends of World Vision."
World Vision had hoped to take what it described as a neutral position in the gay marriage debate by deferring it to the local church. The changed policy still required singles to remain abstinent and married couples to maintain fidelity, but no longer limited marriage to heterosexuals.
"They were not taking a position supporting same-sex marriage or homosexuality," said Tim Dearborn, director of Fuller Seminary's Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching, who previously oversaw how World Vision's Christian commitments were implemented across its international partners. Instead, he said World Vision, which has a "deep commitment to live and serve in ways that are consistent with Scripture," was attempting to do three things.
"First, to focus on the aspects of the biblical mandate that are non-negotiable: caring for the poor, victims of injustice, and especially children," said Dearborn. "Second, to contribute to the unity of the church around those things, at a time when the church is fractured. And third, to contribute as a result of that to the credibility of the gospel and the church in the eyes of American society."
More than 2,000 of the 1.2 million children sponsored by World Vision U.S. had been dropped between CT's first reporting of the decision and Tuesday afternoon, according to a tweet by Ryan Reed (he credited his wife, who works at World Vision, with the information; the tweet has since been deleted). But it was not clear whether those numbers were a net loss or had been offset by new donors, said former World Vision staffer Ben Irwin.
"Assuming the '2,000' figure is accurate, that amounts to just under two-tenths of one percent of all kids sponsored through World Vision U.S.," Irwin wrote. "But this was never about percentages. This is about real lives. It's about kids in impoverished communities who just became pawns in our culture war."
Approximately 7 million of World Vision's more than billion budget comes from private contributions, according to its 2012 annual report.
Some supporters took on additional sponsorships in support of the decision. Kristen Howerton, a professor of psychology for Vanguard University and popular blogger, organized a fundraiser with the goal of getting 100 children supported to help make up the difference. She accomplished her goal in a day.
She said she made the decision after seeing hundreds of comments on social media from people vowing to drop their support. "I think people's reactions have been pretty swift in condemning World Vision in placing them outside the fold of evangelical Christianity," she said.
Matthew Lee Anderson reflected on whether and how evangelicals should stop supporting World Vision financially. Esther Fleece reflected on her experience at Focus on the Family when TOM'S Shoes ended a partnership over Focus's stance on homosexuality.
"We can disagree with each other and still serve people in urgent need. The days of boycotting everything are over, but that doesn't mean Christian convictions are," she wrote for On Faith. "Correct theology is loving people, and no Bible-believing Christian is going to withhold service from a person in need who disagrees with his or her interpretation of Scripture."
John Huffman, who was a World Vision board member for 26 years, is a fervent supporter of the work Stearns has done. He told CT his "high point" on the board was hiring Stearns, and this was the first time the two men had disagreed. But Huffman called the previous decision to change the employment policy "unwise" on every front. "It lacks of wisdom in terms of biblical, theological, moral, cultural, and strategic implications to the organization," he said.
Strategically, it would have alienated many evangelicals, which make up the majority of World Vision supporters. Given that World Vision has kept such a strong evangelical identity, it's unlikely to attract people from the other side of the fence, said Huffman, who is [full disclosure] board chair for Christianity Today as well as Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
"I don't think it's going to help the institution," he told CT before today's reversal announcement. "I don't think there are going to be other people on this organization that are going to be attracted." (After today's announcement, Huffman told CT, "I'm very relieved and very grateful for the decision of the board to reverse their position.")
Dearborn said that World Vision U.S.'s relationship with its partner organizations also played a role in today's decision. "There's an effort on the part of World Vision U.S. not only to be subject to the authority of Scripture, but also to be sensitive to being a member of an international partnership," he said. "There are 50-some World Visions in the world. Especially in Africa and Asia, the position World Vision just rescinded would have been troublesome."
Stearns reached out to those partners in World Vision's announcement of the reversal, asking for forgiveness:
We are writing to you our trusted partners and Christian leaders who have come to us in the spirit of Matthew 18 to express your concern in love and conviction. You share our desire to come together in the Body of Christ around our mission to serve the poorest of the poor. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness.
Some critics were quick to extend it. "World Vision has done the right thing," tweeted Moore after the reversal. "Now, let's all work for a holistic gospel presence, addressing both temporal and eternal needs."
"Remember, World Vision may stand to lose more money (in corporate and government sponsorships) by taking this stand," tweeted Denny Burk. "It's really remarkable."
To Stanley Carlson-Thies, president of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, World Vision's controversial decision was a good opportunity for similar organizations to consider their own stances.
"I think it's probably good that other organizations have to face that decision, because it's all around us," he told CT before the reversal. "I would hope that organizations use this as an opportunity to think about their own policy, not just follow the leader."
[Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the reversal letter was approved by the "entire" board. Stearns mispoke during a joint interview with reporters.]
Here is the full text of World Vision's announcement today:
Lest this sample seem unfair, let’s start at the beginning, in one of the greenest books of all. The first chapters of Genesis feature a lot of green ink, including every word of chapter one and almost all of chapter two (though, oddly, only the first of Eden’s four rivers, and not 2:24’s concluding testimony to human family life). Yet the verdant primordial narratives of Genesis 1-11 blacken into the patriarchal narratives of Genesis 12-50, whose few green passages stand out peculiarly. They are 12:10 on famished Abram’s journey to Egypt; 15:18-19 on God’s covenant of land to Abram; reiterations of that promise in 26:3, 28:4, and 35:11-12; Jacob’s confession that God is at Bethel in 28:16-17; and finally, Joseph’s handling of prosperity and then famine in 41:47-49 and 41:53-57. These passages illustrate God’s involvement and creation’s interdependence, but not creation care as such. They show us that land in Genesis is basically a matter of tribal inheritance and wealth, neither for exploitation nor conservation, but residence and development. Countless other highlighting choices will mislead casual readers and confuse careful ones.
The two testaments’ central concerns—covenanted Israel, anointed Jesus, and missional church—are pushed aside by the green passages that testify, or are made to testify, on environmentalism’s behalf. Yet if the editors narrowed their criteria or applied them strictly, much less of The Green Bible would be in green, and that would give the false impression of biblical indifference. This double bind makes The Green Bible an awkward witness to the strong theological case that can actually be made for creation care. Despite the publisher’s intent, spending time with The Green Bible makes me more aware than ever of the gulf separating ancient Israel from the Sierra Club, and warier of forcing environmentalism, anti-environmentalism, or any other contemporary agenda into passages of Scripture.
Ripening and Cultivation Needed
The strongest part of The Green Bible is the introductory essays. While their quality is uneven, some stand out as insightful theological affirmations of creation care—particularly those of John Paul II and N. T. Wright. These do the book’s heavy lifting. Indeed, they bear nearly its entire intellectual burden.
This is a problem that disguises an opportunity. To advance a biblical case for creation care, proponents might look to an unlikely mentor: American fundamentalism. What powered fundamentalism’s success was a four-volume collection of essays called The Fundamentals. Addressing a variety of related issues, written by leading pastors and scholars, published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and underwritten by oil magnates Lyman and Milton Stewart, The Fundamentals did the intellectual hard work and won the visibility that established fundamentalism’s size and self-respect.
Green Christianity’s midwives will need to commit similarly massive resources to deliver a credible movement. A ready audience awaits such careful thinking. The same Barna Group study that found widespread environmental concern among Christians also found that only about a third of active churchgoers have heard churches teach or preach on environmental issues. They are “green” in another sense—they need experience and training. While The Green Bible demonstrates some of the same immaturity, its best essays show that excellent work is already being done that deserves further development and greater exposure.
Of course, fundamentalism would not have been what it was without the Scofield Reference Bible, whose marginal notes convinced millions of readers that dispensationalism was biblical, and whose phenomenal sales kept Oxford University Press solvent during the Great Depression. However, The Green Bible isn’t even a reference Bible that trains readers to see its agenda in Scripture. It leaves readers on their own to figure out the relevance of passages both green and black. It offers no study notes beyond the New Revised Standard Version’s critical notes, and its concluding “Green Bible Trail Guide” merely offers unremarkable thematic verse lists and questions for Bible study groups. This is not a study Bible, let alone a “definitive” one.
Hybrid Vehicle
What is The Green Bible, then? Despite its worthwhile intentions, its packaging, assumptions, and interpretive shortcuts suggest it’s not the rigorous guide to biblical creation care we need, but a hybrid of two things: an ideological fashion accessory, and a vehicle for promoting conventional progressive environmentalism.
This charge will seem unfair to some, if only because I seem to be pointing out the speck in my brother’s eye. After all, the Bible is already a fashion accessory. It is available in every shape, size, and price range to suit a dizzying variety of target markets: Bibles for men, for women, for newlyweds, for parents, for children, for teens, for various ethnicities—and, of course, Bibles fashioned for us academics. In my circles, basic black is the rule, red letters gauche, and utility its own elegance. First-year students marvel at my bilingual Hebrew and Greek editions, and majors admire my voluminous Bible reference software. And I can’t say I mind it when they do. Why should I begrudge Prius-driving disciples the same satisfaction?
Likewise, the Bible is a vehicle for many agendas. Gideon Bibles are made for personal salvation, and unashamedly so. Many confessional Bibles—the Scofield Reference Bible’s publishing heirs—are designed to propagate their camps’ theological stances. The Bible seems better suited to these ends than to single issues such as creation care. Confessional Bibles teach a whole tradition of biblical interpretation, and Gideon Bibles aim to make disciples who will be whole-Bible readers. Like tour buses, these vehicles orient readers to more and more of the Bible itself. But single-issue Bibles aren’t even tour buses; they’re express trains. They expose us only to what lies on the way to their terminal destination. They conform the Bible, and then readers, to their narrow agenda.
The Green Bible is hardly the first to do this; it is not even the first to do it in color. The Jesus Seminar both exploited and subverted the red-letter effect in its Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (Polebridge, 1993), coloring Jesus’ words from red to black according to how historical a group of biblical critics thought they were. The Promise Bible (Tyndale, 2001) highlights all of God’s promises to us in the Psalms, Proverbs, and New Testament, conveniently ignoring our covenantal obligations in return. Robert H. Schuller even published a Possibility Thinkers Bible (Nelson, 1984), with “positive verses for possibility thinking highlighted in blue.” (Resurrection passages: highlighted. Crucifixion passages: not highlighted.)
Vehicles like these disperse our fellowships into scattered interest groups who represent the various causes and subcultures that rise, clash, and fall in a democracy. The satires practically write themselves: a pink- and baby-blue-letter Pro-life Bible, an olive drab Soldier’s Bible, a purple Swing States Bible. These are no longer the Word of God for the whole people of God, a whole congregation, or even a whole person. Are they even Bibles?
The Final Word
The Green Bible‘s destination, its rhetorical finale, is a section called “Where Do You Go from Here?” It includes action items for households and churches, tips for getting started in Christian environmentalism—which, it must be said, looks basically like secular environmentalism plus some prayer and Bible memorization—and a list of religious and secular organizations devoted to environmental advocacy and poverty relief. In the end, this project nurtures not disciples, souls, or even better readers, but devotees to a predictable set of causes, along with a hefty “green premium” for the publisher. For Scripture, this is too meager a harvest.
Nevertheless, The Green Bible is a Bible after all. Buried in its introductory material is this remark from Bruce M. Metzger’s preface to the NRSV, which licensees are obligated to include:
The Bible carries its full message, not to those who regard it simply as a noble literary heritage of the past or who wish to use it to enhance political purposes and advance otherwise desirable goals, but to all persons and communities who read it so that they may discern and understand what God is saying to them.
In all of The Green Bible, these uncelebrated words encourage me most. Few will find them. Yet those who do might be moved, not away from environmentalism or any otherwise desirable goal, but toward the Bible’s incomprehensible fullness. That fullness will finally put to shame all our commentaries, our forewords and afterwords, our footnotes and indexes, our trendsetting and target marketing, and yes, our colorizing.
Telford Work is associate professor of theology at Westmont College and author of The Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Deuteronomy.
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